Network Meeting – Is The Human Brain a Friend or Enemy When It Comes to Safety? – Cristian Sylvestre (Habitsafe)
PRESENTATOR: Cristian Sylvestre (Habitsafe)
TOPIC: Is The Human Brain a Friend or Enemy When It Comes to Safety?
We keep doing the “same old, same old” under different labels in the name of safety expecting a different result. The problem is that safety performance, whichever way we look at it, has been stagnant for more than 15 years. This is even though we do more for safety every day and we do it better than ever before.
So, what are we missing? As it turns out, quite a lot.
When modern safety began, there were lots of hazards around, so ONLY doing things around workers improved safety significantly. However, these days it’s not enough. If it was, safety performance would be improving year on year.
There is no doubt that we need to continue to do things around workers. A good system is important, but no system is 100% effective 100% of the time.
When the system fails, what do we have to protect workers from getting hurt?
Not much.
Additional training, caring more, or trying to get workers to keep safety front-of-mind is just not effective. That’s because some of what we currently do for safety “works against our brain biology”. This is a significant part of the reason safety these days is not improving.
The discoveries of neuroscience help us understand what actually drives safety behaviour, and how we can use this new-found knowledge to help workers be safer and leaders lead better.
If we are serious about safety, it makes sense to use everything at our disposal.
The discoveries of neuroscience have been used effectively to help workplaces prevent incidents of all severities.
We need to continue to do things around workers, but we ALSO need to help workers avoid getting hurt, especially when the system fails.
About your Speaker:
Cristian’s 30-year safety career started in chemical manufacturing and then moved to the oil and gas industry. In this heavy processing and complex environment, he quickly learned that there are different types of safety that need to be dealt with differently.
As a professional chemical engineer and having worked as a process safety engineer, he is trained to analyse complex problems and use evidence-based science to deliver the simplest solutions that achieve positive safety outcomes.
His main field of interest is how inattention impacts safety, at work and elsewhere. Research shows inattention is in play in 95% of incidents, even serious ones.
About 20 years ago, he got interested in neuroscience and wrote a book “Third Generation Safety: The Missing Piece – Using Neuroscience to Enable Safety” to help people understand how inattention comes about and what we can all do to be more attentive.